Canada program offers social, academic support

The club partners with the Canadian studies program to run a variety of Canada-related activities, including celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving every October, taking trips to hockey games and hosting distinguished Canadian speakers.

“We’re all just trying to have a good time,” Kyle Hagel ’08 said. Hagel hails from Ontario and is co-president of the Canadian Club with Michael Moore ’08. “You can get lost in the hustle of Princeton, and it’s good to meet other Canadians.”

Carol Ann MacGregor GS, an Ontario native who is pursuing a Ph.D. in the sociology department, said that the club helps bring Canadian culture to Princeton.

“I don’t think it’s one of those things that people think about every day, but it is really nice to have people to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving with or who want to cheer on the same hockey team as you,” she said.

For Canadians and non-Canadians alike, the Canadian studies program provides funding for research in Canada or French-language study. The program also hosts a visiting professor from Canada who teaches one or two classes related to the country every year. This year’s visiting professor is Arthur Ray from the University of British Columbia.

The Canadian studies program, which does not offer a certificate, was created in 1991 by a grant from the Canadian government and continues to receive financial support from Canadian alumni.

Allan Patten, a politics professor and the chair of the Canadian studies program, explained that Princeton does not have enough faculty members interested in Canada to offer a certificate.

Nevertheless, the program does have a great deal to offer to the Princeton community, program director Jaime Kirzner-Roberts GS said.

“It allows students who have roots in Canada to maintain those roots. It gives [Princeton] a chance to get some of the better Canadian students by offering something significant to Canadian students on campus,” she said, adding that the program “broadens the general understanding of Canada and Canadian issues.”

Patten noted that many of the issues covered in courses sponsored by the program are shared by the United States and Canada. He cited immigration, the environment, Native American rights, federalism, health policy, taxation and childcare as examples.

“Canada provides a wonderful laboratory for considering issues comparatively,” Patten said, explaining that though the two North American countries are similar in many respects, there are key differences in how they address these issues.

Though there is no plan to offer a certificate, Patten does not believe this to be a problem.

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“I’m not sure that knowledge should be organized by country and region,” he said. “We just want to keep [Canada] on the map as an important case. ... I don’t think there needs to be a certificate per se for us to accomplish [our] goals.”

Ray, however, said he felt that more courses were needed. He explained that it was challenging to teach his courses because most students have little background in Native American or Canadian history.

Ray is currently teaching a course titled HIS 404/ANT 434: Native Americans in North America: History and Anthropology. Last semester he offered HIS 406: Borderland histories: Historical Perspectives of Native People Living in the Canada-U.S. Borderland.

Originally from Wisconsin, Ray moved to Canada in 1970 to continue his studies on the history of Native Americans in North America, particularly in Canada.

Though Ray admitted that it would be difficult to create a certificate program without interested faculty, he recommended that the program offer an annual seminar on themes in Canadian studies. Though specific topics would change from year to year, students would at least know the course was there, Ray explained.

Ray was not pessimistic, though, and said that the Canadian studies program was a good start. “Students can have exposure to [Canada] if they’re interested,” he said. He also praised the hosting of guest speakers as a way to reach a broader audience and give it “exposure to a larger community of scholars from Canada and topics they’re working on.”

Canadian course offerings aside, Ray said that he was surprised by the lack of Princeton courses about Native Americans. He noted that while at the University of British Columbia there is a large Native American presence, “the Native is almost invisible and rarely mentioned” at Princeton.

Though the program does not offer a certificate, it makes a large academic contribution to Princeton through the funding it provides to students. Only two or three undergraduates apply for funding each year, Patten said, so most funding goes to graduate students.

For example, MacGregor received money to present her research on religion and electoral behavior in Canada at a conference.

Phillip Connor GS, a sociology student from New Brunswick, has received funding to travel to Canada to use an on-site-only Canadian dataset for his research on immigrant religiosity in Canada.

The program will continue to accept applications for junior paper and senior thesis funding through the end of May. Students may receive up to $5,000, depending on their research needs.

Applications for funding for French study in Canada will be accepted through the end of April.